Electric Car Stations Planned All Over Hawaii

Just weeks after three mayors in the San Francisco Bay Area announced a partnership with the company Better Place to bring a network of electric-vehicle charging stations to their cities, Hawaii has one-upped them.

Hawaii, also in tandem with Better Place, will become the first state to adopt a network of charging stations that covers its entire territory. Obviously, this is made easier by Hawaii's small size, both in population and in territory. The state has only 1.3 million people, while the Bay Area alone holds 7 million.

The ambitious project will open its first stations by 2011, and have 50,000-100,000 stations across the state by 2012. Better Place wants to use Hawaii as a model for other states, demonstrating how to build EV infrastructure and create jobs from scratch.

Following this project, Hawaii's challenge will be shifting to renewable energy to generate electricity. Currently, 90% of the state's energy needs are met by imported oil (at a cost of $7 billion annually). Again, Hawaii makes for a good science experiment in this regard: It has no shortage of wind, sun and waves.

Hawaii to be 1st State with Electric Car Stations (The Washington Post)

Comments

[Max Reid]

Good attempt. Hope other states follow.
Time to apply this concept in all island / smaller nations like Japan, Britain, Singapore, etc.

[James]

This idea would be great. Except for the part about Hawaii needing oil to generate 90 percent of it's energy. What happens when everyone starts using charging stations for their cars? More oil to generate more electricity.

[ZAP Alias]

Hawaii is uniquely able to support an EV network because of its abundant resources of renewable and sustainable energy which can be transformed into clean electricity: solar, wind, geothermal power and perhaps even wave!